


The Handle of the Lock

by slattern



Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1920s, Alice B. Toklas, Author is working something out, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a mess, Aziraphale is an emotional eater, BDSM, Bodily Fluids, Bottom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Buddhism, Butch Crowley, Crete, Crowley Has A Vulva (Good Omens), Crowley is angry, Cunnilingus, Dolly Wilde - Freeform, Dominance, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Femdom, Femme Crowley, Frescoes, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Gertrude Stein - Freeform, Hand Jobs, He/Him Pronouns For Aziraphale (Good Omens), Kinky, Knossos, LGBTQIA+ History, Lesbian Sex, Library Sex, Literature, Lost Generation, M/M, Minoan, Natalie Barney, Olives, Other, Paris (City), She/Her Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens), Submission, Talmud, Top Crowley (Good Omens), Under-negotiated Kink, Voyeurism, Wet & Messy, fuck the patriarchy, i talk about my fic in therapy, lesbian herstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:07:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22326064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slattern/pseuds/slattern
Summary: In the 1920s Parisian literary salon of Natalie Barney, Crowley and Aziraphale recall a memorable afternoon in Ancient Crete____________They've been at enough of the same salons, parties and gatherings for people to notice that there was something between them. Something… smoldering. Aziraphale knew Crowley's friends were puzzled, they’d never seen a man on her menu before. Tonight, the angel and demon circled each other, their mutual avoidance somehow newly electric. Crowley seems different. Not looking away when Aziraphale glances at her. Not cuddling up in the corner with any of the blushing roses and sturdy daisies who might seek her out.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley/Original Female Character(s) (Good Omens)
Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571059
Comments: 35
Kudos: 88





	The Handle of the Lock

**Author's Note:**

> Including something from Crowley's perspective. She is angry. CW for what might look like dubcon, plus humans being objectified.
> 
> A million thank-yous to my incredible, thoughtful beta [Tyrograph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrograph/pseuds/Tyrograph), who cheerfully and expertly makes my smut make sense. Go enjoy their incredible artwork, include [one illustrating a moment from my last story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22203667), The Bee Drinks Nectar!
> 
> There are references to previous stories in the series here, it's conceived of as one long work, with an eventual happy ending, because I need it.
> 
> Come see me on tumblr, [lavraiemonchichi ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lavraiemonchichi)where I've posted some [inspirational images](https://lavraiemonchichi.tumblr.com/post/190311285598/inspiration-images-for-my-current-story-almost) for this work, including photos of _Le Monocle_ , a historical Parisian lesbian bar, Dolly Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall and Minoan Snake Goddesses and the frescoes featured in the story.

_I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped [with] myrrh, and my fingers [with] sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock._

Song of Solomon, KJV

Paris, 1927

Aziraphale could hardly avoid hearing about Crowley, they were active in the same circles, hangers on and attendees at Natalie Barney's salons, the lively literati of la generation perdue, gathered around the beating heart of Gertrude and Alice and their Sapphist compatriots. Among them was Natalie’s new lover, Dolly Wilde. She was Oscar’s niece, and so like him in the face it was a bit hard for the angel to look at her.

Crowley was more on the inside of the circle, to be fair - and Aziraphale did like to be fair. With her close-cropped hair and tailored suits, shaded glasses and long cigarette holder, the demon was welcomed into the inner court of those pushing at the boundaries of what they had been taught, of what "the fairer sex" could dare to imagine or desire.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, was enmeshed with a group of rather dull sycophants, with very little to recommend them as companions. Not that he was in the market for companionship; he'd been dutifully and miserably celibate since seeing Crowley off in Boston. The way he and Crowley had treated that boy. The way Crowley had treated him. And the way he'd treated Crowley. It was all wrong. If he couldn't have Crowley fully, openly - and he couldn't - he would deny himself everything.

There will be no more half measures, screwing his eyes shut so he can say 'I saw nothing. I have no idea.' before some imagined future tribunal. All while Crowley pleasures him, leaving him dazed and compliant. Anything Crowley asked, he would do. Until he's awoken, inevitably, by the crashing waves of their reality, the danger that losing control puts Aziraphale and his friend - his beloved friend - in. This cycle has repeated over decades, centuries even. But no more. He’d ended it. As best he could.

They've been at enough of the same salons, parties and gatherings for people to notice that there was something between them. Something… smoldering. Aziraphale knew Crowley's friends were puzzled, they’d never seen a man on her menu before. Tonight, the angel and demon circled each other, their mutual avoidance somehow newly electric. Crowley seems different. Not looking away when Aziraphale glances at her. Not cuddling up in the corner with any of the blushing roses and sturdy daisies who might seek her out.

Aziraphale can feel her eyes on him through her dark glasses. There are a few conversation groups in the library, Crowley is pretending to listen as a dark-haired naïf reads from a loosely bound book of poems to a small gathering of women. Across the room, Aziraphale sits in a comfortable green wingback while a rather pompous antiquities dealer (who invited him?) flips through Evan’s book on Knossos[1], explaining the frescoes to the angel. The book is large and takes up most of the ornate marble table it is opened on. The garish colour plates don’t look exactly like the angel remembers, but he remembers. Dolphins leaping across a sun-dappled wall. The young woman extended, impossibly athletic, as she throws her body joyfully over the huge sacred bull, the arch of her back echoing the rest of the memory. He looks up, his cheeks flushed and hot, and meets Crowley’s eyes.

\-----

_My love thrusts his hand at the latch  
And my heart leaps for him!_

_I rise to open for my love,  
My hands dripping perfume on the lock_

__

_I open,  
But he has gone.  
_ The Song of Songs, Trans. Marcia Falk

Crete was a waystation, a resting place. For hundreds of years it was an island you could go where you wouldn’t find a packload of militaristic arseholes running around, jabbing people with their spears and generally making it hard to relax. Aziraphale could eat grilled goat with pomegranate molasses and the thickest sheep's milk yogurt drizzled with honey, tangy and sweet. Crowley could drink the Cretan wine that tasted like sunshine, and she could enjoy this manifestation of her corporation with an ease that was growing distressingly rare as history marched on.

They don’t plan to meet, or coordinate their visits, but it happens enough by chance that Aziraphale has come to expect that when he stops for a few weeks in Crete once a year, he’ll likely see Crowley. He asks at the market, and is directed to a house north of the city, where the streets are wide and clean and houses of white stone wrap around inner gardens and pools. At Crowley’s house he’s told to come back tomorrow by an elegant woman with a blue linen skirt and dark locks of hair coiled on her head - the demon’s majordomo. Her embroidered hem drags on the ground. Her breasts are bare above her laced corset, and they press together fetchingly when she clasps her hands in apology to Aziraphale.

He’s back the next day, eager to see his friend and trade their stories of the year since they last met. At the door he’s greeted again by the majordomo, this time in a belled skirt alternating green and yellow, her breasts covered by a gauzy fitted blouse. She shows him into an antechamber with a carved wooden chair piled with pillows, and a bowl of brined olives and some sliced figs on a small table. The woman leaves him. Aziraphale studies the fresco in the room. He’s never been here before, this is much more well-appointed than the rooms above an oil merchant where the angel is staying. The fresco is dolphins, leaping across the side of the room, the flickering sunlight through the lattice ceiling creating the illusion of undulating movement. Aziraphale has some olives, and then a few more, sitting in the chair. They are dried and cured, and have been packed in brine with herbs. He tastes rosemary, the hillsides in summer. He stands and circles the room, slightly restless now. He eats a few more olives before realizing he’s become intensely thirsty. There’s nothing for it, he’ll have to see if he can find that lovely woman and ask for some water.

Peering out of the chamber into the tiled hallway, the angel sees no sign of the servant or any other human. Turning deeper into the house, he sees a doorway and heads towards it. Halfway there, Aziraphale can see it opens into a larger room, the view blocked by an intricate wooden screen, carved in a repeating pattern of heavily fruited trees, light filtering through the design from the room beyond. There’s a small table in front of the screen, with a painted terracotta jug and matching cup, flanked by a small three-legged stool with a leather seat. The sides of the jug are beaded with condensation; whatever it holds is cool and Aziraphale’s mouth puckers in anticipation of quenching his thirst.

In a few steps, he’s at the door, his hand extended eagerly. It’s watered wine, cool and light. Aziraphale pours and drinks, eyes closing in ecstasy as his thirst is relieved by the cold sweetness. He’s lost in the sensation of relief when he hears a cry, a woman’s voice, and then Crowley’s voice, indistinct but filled with laughter. Opening his eyes, he realizes he can see through the screen into the room on the other side.

The room beyond is huge, a massive fresco of young women cheerfully leaping bulls on the far wall. Most of the space is taken up by an enormous bed, a wooden platform heaped with a mass of brightly dyed silks and pillows. Splayed upon it is a woman, her rosy blonde hair spilling over onto the cushions propping up her body, which is lush and indulgent, blending into the softness of the bed coverings. She’s a foreigner, like them, one of the many from Europe, Egypt, Syria and beyond, drawn here to this cosmopolitan city. The cry was hers, and she’s meeting the eyes of her companion, a copper head between her opened thighs, laughing together over the swell of her belly.

The woman’s breasts are large and soft, her indistinct areolas beginning to pucker in the air. Crowley is reaching up to slide long fingered hands around them, pushing them together on her chest and trapping her small, hard nipples between clever fingertips. The woman arches her back, pushing her breasts against Crowley’s hands, her legs opening wider as her head presses back into the pillows. Her eyes are tightly shut and she’s moaning. Somehow her cries sound good - very good - to Aziraphale. The hair on her forehead is darkened to amber with sweat.

Crowley has lowered her head back to the silky pink gash Aziraphale can see between the woman’s legs, her pubic hair matted with wetness. Aziraphale is frozen, cup in hand, his breath held in his lungs. His ears are full of the woman’s mews and gasps of pleasure as his friend kisses and nips her plump, furry mound, and then the deeper sound pulled from her as Crowley’s hands move to her thighs, pushing them apart, her sex opening for the demon’s mouth like a fig splitting its skin, spilling seeds and sweetness.

Men’s kilts are cut very high in Crete, so Aziraphale must maintain an effort to avoid causing consternation. Not that it had to be male, per se, but nothing would have provoked questions. This was the first effort he’d made long ago, and so he stuck with it. He’d never really seen the other most common variant, never thought about corporations with soft breasts, curving hips, what it would feel like to be in one, to touch one. His organ is stiffening below his clothes, he’s still clutching the cup of wine. He can’t bring himself to step away or even breathe.

The woman is panting now, and Crowley is kissing and licking the top of her slit, rubbing and petting her mound. Once she slaps it playfully. Each movement of the demon evokes a change in the woman’s cries, from deeper moans to high pitched gasps, and a tilt of her hips, lifting right off the bed when Crowley slapped her thick mons, its strawberry gold fuzz covering the curve of it right to her dimpled, ample thighs.

Aziraphale feels wetness soaking his kilt and for a disoriented moment thinks he’s climaxed right there from the intensity of his arousal. But it’s the wine, he’s spilled it on himself. Righting the cup, he looks back to see that Crowley is on all fours on the bed now, between the woman’s spread legs.

Crowley’s shape is rounder, fuller, than the last time Aziraphale had seen the demon naked, at some communal bathhouse in Uruk or Nineveh. Her thighs are slender, their soft inner surfaces pale, giving over to a curve of hip that makes the angel's palms tingle. And between those thighs, impossible to look away from, the dark, sumptuously wet folds of Crowley’s sex, outlined in red-gold hair. Aziraphale’s knees buckle under him, depositing him on the stool, his hand flying to cover his eyes, his member painfully hard now. He cannot look at the Holy of Holies.[2]

He’s made a noise, some small one, and Crowley turns to look over her shoulder towards the screen, lips curving, her long red curls pooling over the body of the woman beneath her. Aziraphale struggles to his feet and runs out of the room, straight into the majordomo.

“Ah, the Lady said you might want refreshment sir, would you like to follow me?”

“I, I have to go actually, must be getting back, can you show me out please?” He’s trying to hold his body to conceal his erection from her impassive face, but it’s a losing battle. Between his embarrassment and her utterly unerotic escort down the hall, across a courtyard, and out of the house, he’s soft by the time he begins the walk back to the oil merchant’s. He has dinner with Crowley two days later, and neither of them mention the afternoon past.

_____________________

 _To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.  
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,  
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,  
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings._  
Wendell Berry

They’re like the tides, the drawing up and down of the moon that she’s never unaware of - staying away from Aziraphale and then returning to him. Crowley doesn’t resist the tides within her, the orbit of apart and near, of desire and despair. She was sent away, so she went away. But now she doesn’t want to be away any more.

Since they met again in Paris, after the war, Aziraphale’s misery and the tight bondage he’s keeping himself under is palpable to Crowley. She can feel it across a room, across a city even. He’s frozen himself away from her, from them, and all she’s been able to do for two decades is accept it. It wasn’t that difficult during the war. Her pain and anger propelled her away from him after their last night in Boston, and she didn’t resist it, the ebbing, trusting the flow would come again, some day, in the way of all things. They’d seen each other a few times right after the armistice, Crowley relishing and subtly encouraging the Lesbians in their tailored suits and slim, uncorseted dresses. She’d met them driving ambulances during the war[3], the smell of blood and the cries of the young men as the world burned around them somehow freeing them all, the everpresence of death igniting into ash whatever remained to hold them back from themselves and each other. Now, after the war, Europe was being remade, and there were new spaces for Crowley to work, to press little seeds into damp earth, enriched with blood, growing vines up to crack the foundations. The whole edifice must come down, sooner or later.

It's getting late in the evening now. This is one of the larger gatherings, and there's still a few dozen people in the salon, filled with softly cushioned sofa beds and portraits of women, arrayed almost haphazardly around the room. There's people in the dining room, enjoying Mme. Berthe's cake, and Crowley knows there's at least one couple in the garden, pressed against _le Temple de L'Amitié_ in a passionate expression of friendship.[4]

Aziraphale's been drifting around the room, chatting with a few starched shirt types. He's wearing a relatively stylish ensemble, probably because men's fashion lost a decade to the war. Regardless, he's more elegant than the scruffy poets, in his straight legged cream tuxedo, little wings on his gold collar pins. Seems he's left his usual vanilla frock coat at home. The short modern cut of the jacket shows more of the angel's shape, how he fills out the suit with the swells and curves of his body, the heft of his thighs that make Crowley want to bend him over and drag her fingers up the back of his legs before sinking them into the meat of his hips.

The demon bites her cheek and cracks her knuckles. Tonight is a night for it. It's been so long since she felt it, this vibration in the soles of her feet, the center of her palms. It's early May. Beltane, the old people called this time. They would burn a fire and couple in the light of it, or in the dark of the field just beyond the flames. Those memories are sweet, nourishing. She won't be denied tonight.

Aziraphale has edged all the way to the door, and then he's gone, out into the room beyond.

Crowley waits an amount of time that she judges will offer some subtlety, before slipping out the door after the angel. She knows where he’s going - to the library, to look at that book with the frescoes and relive that afternoon all those centuries ago in Crete, before the volcano. He’s probably already hard.

She finds him just as expected, his back to her, standing at the marble table with the open Knossos book, in the far corner of the library. He’s running his fingers over one of the plates, the fresco of a young woman leaping over a bull. Crowley is behind him now, the stiff toes of her brogues tapping his heels, bracketing him with her arms.

“What do you remember, angel? Do you remember that fresco?” Crowley’s voice shakes slightly. It’s been 14 years since they’ve been like this, spoken like this. Aziraphale turns in the hoop of her arms, facing her. As their eyes meet, Crowley lifts a hand and loosens her black satin bow tie, undoing her collar. The angel hasn’t made a sound, but his pupils are dilated and there’s sweat on his upper lip.

“Crowley! I… the recent discoveries...the frescoes are so magnificent…”

Crowley feels a hot pulse of rage - he would deny her, deny himself and what he so clearly wanted, needed, for thousands of years. There had to be consequences. That is the way of things, the truth that swam in Crowley’s blood, that she reached out to Aziraphale with. This thing, will lead to that thing. Everything is connected. You can’t deny this, without paying a price.

“I don’t think you get to look at me this time, angel.” Her voice is gruff as she seizes Aziraphale by his jacket shoulders and spins him around. Her thick leather shoe kicks apart his delicate ivory derbys, spreading his legs. Crowley is flush against the angel’s back, one hand at his waist and the other at his shoulder, holding him against her. Aziraphale makes a noise that might be a moan or a sob.

“Tell me you want it.”

“Crowley… I c-c-can’t.” The angel is shaking, stuttering, his body hot, pressing back into her.

“You sent me away. What did you think I would do? Tell me that you want this, that you want me.”

“Crowley, I, I can't oh I want, I don't…”

“Just open your mouth and say it. You talk all the time angel, open your lips and say this to me.” The hand on the angel’s shoulder is now at his throat, stroking it as if to coax the words out of his unwilling mouth.

“Oh… Crowley.” Aziraphale can’t seem to speak above a whisper now. His eyes are closed, and his mouth is trembling.

Crowley’s hand slides up the angel’s throat, she can feel him vibrating with tension and fear. She won’t deny it tastes good to her. For him to fear her the way she fears the lack of him. For his misguided spirit, trained in heaven’s foolish polarity, to experience the true nature of reality. The swing of the pendulum, the destruction, and the renewal. Like Europe and the war. She’ll break him down so that more and varied truths can emerge for him. So he can see things as they really are.

Crowley’s hand slides further up to cover Aziraphale’s mouth, shushing his small, panting sobs. “Angel. You’re going to open your mouth and you’re going to tell the truth. You want me. You want me to fuck you, to take my pleasure in you, you want to give yourself over to me completely. Now say it.”

Aziraphale is crying now, tears spilling from his closed eyes onto his cheeks, hot and blotchy. Crowley’s hand moves across his face, smearing the wetness of his tears. She slips two long fingers between his lips. “Open your mouth Aziraphale. Just tell the truth. How can that be a sin?” Her fingers slide in and out of the angel’s slack mouth, his head hanging down. After a half dozen thrusts, fingers wet with his saliva and tears, Crowley’s hand is back at Aziraphale’s soft throat, lifting his body upright to press against her.

“You're going to do whatever you want, aren't you” Aziraphale whispers. Crowley feels the hum of it in her fingers at his throat. “Whatever you want and I can't stop you.”

“That's right angel. I'm going to do whatever I want. I wish I still had that walking stick, don’t you?”

Aziraphale lets out a groan, his lower back arching him into the demon. Crowley has to close her eyes for a moment, weak with wanting. She’s drenched, slipping in her underwear. All those delightful humans over the millenia and not one has done for her what that press of the angel against her, that telegraph of his need, does in an instant.

“I’m going to make you open your mouth. You love to eat, don't you. You'll open up for me now.”

One hand holding the angel in place by the throat, Crowley slides the other down the front of her trousers, into her drenched linen briefs. Her fingers slip right to her inner folds, everything is so wet and soft. She drags two fingers up and down on either side of her clitoris a few times, moaning her pleasure into Aziraphale’s ear as she holds him. He shudders and utters a small cry, more tears spilling out from his tightly shut eyelids. Then she’s pushing inside herself, two fingers, then three, her thumb brushing her nub as she slides in and out.

Crowley’s fingers are covered in her wetness now, and she draws away from herself to bring them up to Aziraphale’s mouth. She smears his lips with her juices, and his mouth opens for her. Crowley slides two long fingers along the angel’s tongue, pink and willing, before adding two more, all her fingers are in his mouth and he chokes wetly once, before working his lips further around the hand straining him open.

“Take out your cock. Stroke yourself.” She thrusts into Aziraphale’s mouth, emphasizing _cock_ and _stroke_. She guides the angel’s head against her shoulder, pushing him into place with the hand filling his mouth. Her other hand slips into her pants, index and middle finger pinching on either side of her clitoris. It’s not going to take much of this for her to come.

His hands trembling, Aziraphale obediently opens his trousers and takes out his cock, it’s gorgeous, sturdy and good natured, just like the angel. The head is shiny with precome, and he uses his palm to smear the wetness around the glans before giving it short, desperate strokes, again and again.

Crowley is gliding her fingers down, down, down, over and over, downward strokes on either side of her clit, it’s so slippery she can’t really rub it, there’s no friction, so she’s pinching and stroking and sliding, in time with the angel’s fist gripping across the head of his cock. Her hand is still in his mouth, Aziraphale is sucking, almost nursing around the fingers filling him, stretching his flushed, swollen lips open.

Aziraphale is gripping the marble table for support, he’s so close, she can feel it as his legs begin to shake. He’s making little panting cries, sounds that might be “oh, oh, oh” or not any words at all. His obedience, the abandonment of his denials, the ferocity of his desire, and the tension of holding herself back from taking him further than his soul can stretch, it’s overwhelming, her own legs are weak and she’s coming, her hand falling out of Aziraphale’s mouth and sliding wetly down to his throat, pulling his head against her, her mouth against his ear as she gasps into it. “Angel I’m coming, I’m coming right now, it’s so wet, wet because of you.” Aziraphale’s knees buckle and he’s spurting, his come arcing once, twice out of his cock, onto a colour reproduction of the bull jumping fresco at Knossos in Sir Arthur Evans’ book. The angel milks the dregs of pleasure from himself, the last of his spend trailing down his cock in a thick drop. They pant together for a minute, minutes.

Aziraphale puts himself away and slowly fastens his trousers, and Crowley pulls her hand out of hers. Her other hand is still loosely around the angel’s throat. Her fingers slick with tangy nectar, she brings them to his lips, gently, not insistently. He opens for her, licking her clean. When he’s done, the angel is still for a moment, and then something shifts in his breath, and he’s shaking.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry.” The angel is sobbing, choking on his thickened throat, his whole body spasming, gasping out the words over and over.

“Angel, I know. One day you won’t be. You won’t be sorry any more.” She’s wrapped her arms around him now, palms spread across his soft middle, fingertips between his ribs. She’s speaking into the nape of his neck, her lips moving against his skin there, softening into a kiss. She murmurs reassurance, kissing him again, and again, warm, dry presses, feeling the feather touch of the fine golden hairs on his nape against her lips. She knows his eyes are closed, are going to stay closed.

After a while, a little while, the angel stills, his breathing regular. Crowley slowly untangles her arms from their embrace. She can’t quite bring herself to lift her hands from his body, she slides them around his sides to his spine before finally, slowly, lifting them away from the warmth of skin beneath his jacket.

“I’ve got to get back now angel, it’s been a while. But I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you in London, we’ll have dinner.”

Aziraphale nods diffidently, his body relaxed, but his eyes are still closed as he faces away from the demon. She takes one last look at the back of his neck where her lips were pressed, before slipping out. A moment later she realizes that when the angel opens his eyes he’s going to see his own come all over a colour plate in a _book_ , and she can’t help laughing out loud. She’s still laughing when she reenters the salon.

It’s not gone unnoticed that they disappeared together, causing some confusion in certain quarters, but it’s forgotten again soon enough. The book dealer is gone, back to England, and somehow people have lost track of that fantastic Crowley. She was all the rage for a few years there, but now no one knows where she’s gone, or where she’d come from, really. In London, the following year, two men share a bottle of wine in a bookshop, and neither of them mention Paris.

**Author's Note:**

> 1British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans 'discovered' the Palace at Knossos in the 1890s, and released his book _[Palace of Minos at Knossos](https://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/evans-arthur/palace-of-minos-at-knossos/83751.aspx)_ beginning in 1921
> 
> 2This is based on the legal writings about oral sex in the Talmud, which generally seems to indicate it was permissible (between married couples) as part of a man’s duty to sexually satisfy his wife, described with some choice food related metaphors. Some authorities forbid looking at the vulva. I heard it taught to me once an interpretation of this that it is because it is like the Holy of Holies in the Temple that was forbidden to look on. I can’t find the source of this, but I’ll ask some rabbis and update this if I find one. (also the Talmud is not contemporaneous with ancient Minoan civilization but is from the ancient world, and this is how I imagine Aziraphale reacting, sorry not sorry.)
> 
> 3 Many of the prominent lesbians and bisexual women of the interwar Parisian literary scene including writer Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas, Dolly Wilde, painter Romaine Brooks, British heiress Marion "Joe" Carstairs and writer Radclyffe Hall had driven ambulances as part of an all-female corps during WW1.
> 
>   
> 4  
> [Click to see pics of Natalie's house at 20 Rue Jacob, including photos of 'The Temple of Friendship' ](https://kaykeys.net/passions/nataliebarney/20ruejacob.html)


End file.
